


beyond the blue

by halcyonskies



Series: OTP Challenge [23]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Historical Fantasy, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Married Castiel/Dean Winchester, Pining, Sad Castiel, Sailor Dean, Seaside towns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 17:25:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8219138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halcyonskies/pseuds/halcyonskies
Summary: One day, one day . . . It's all Castiel has to hope for, that Dean will return one day soon. It's all that keeps him from giving up hope.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 23rd Challenge - 10 Years Later
> 
> sorry for the long wait! this one would just not come to me for anything D:

Castiel wished he could turn away from Hael’s pitying stare, but to do so would mean taking his gaze from the burning horizon in the west. There was a desperate anxiety thrumming under his breastbone, a feeling that told him he might miss what he was looking for if he looked away for even a moment. 

“I’ve got to get back,” Hael murmured a while later, after the sun was just dipping into the sea in the distance. “Isaiah is hopeless with the children for any period of time.”

“Then go.” Honestly, he didn’t intend to be short with her; of all of his siblings, she had indulged him the longest. She alone still made this trip with him every month, though Castiel knew she shared their opinion on the matter – this was hopeless, as hopeless as it had been after the first few months without any news. Some of his brothers and sisters pitied him, as Hael did, but most of them were frustrated with this continued vigil. 

_ “Only children pine for what they can’t have,”  _ Gabriel had sneered after the second year had passed and there was still no sign of Castiel’s husband. The loss of his first two wives had made Gabriel bitter and reserved, and so Castiel never engaged him, though he often wished to. 

Anna and Michael were of the opinion that Castiel move on before he reached an age too great to take on another spouse; Muriel thought him melodramatic, and Balthazar believed Castiel remained loyal simply because it was all he knew. Even Samandriel, the youngest of them, wondered why Castiel still waited for an outcome that had long slipped into the realm of impossibility. 

Sometimes Castiel himself didn’t know why he still made this trip every full moon. There was only the smallest, most shriveled part of him that still held onto any hope that Dean might return after all these years. Perhaps he only did it because it was his habit, like Balthazar claimed. 

Hael touched his arm before she left, a gesture that carried with it her forgiveness for his rudeness, for which Castiel was grateful. Soon her soft footsteps were lost to the crash of the waves beneath the dock, a sound that had once filled Castiel with profound calm, an oceanside dweller to his bones. Now, when he couldn’t know if these same waves might have been the reason Dean had never come home, he only felt a blood-deep sense of unrest.

They had been newly married when he’d seen Dean for the last time, though in Castiel’s heart they had always had a married way about them, even from the time they were little boys with skinned knees. Every month Dean would depart on his father’s ship  _ (“Blackflower,”  _ Dean would always say, pride infusing his words as if he were speaking of his own child, causing Castiel no small amount of amusement) for Amarine – a port city that Castiel had never laid his own eyes upon – to deliver supplies. Without fail, he would always be back the first day the moon shone huge and whole in the night sky, a raunchy ditty in his mouth and a kiss for Castiel’s brow. 

But he hadn’t been back that last time, not with the first full moon or the second or any other one that came after. It had been nearly ten years since Castiel had last felt Dean’s lips on his skin, ten years of lonely nights and empty mornings.

It would have been easier if his feelings had dried up over the years of endless waiting, as his siblings seemed to have expected to happen. Sometimes Castiel even wished for it. But no matter how many mornings he woke without Dean lying asleep beside him, his heart still ached with longing for the man he had known all his life. Perhaps something had broken inside of him. Perhaps he was destined to live this half-existence for the rest of his days.

Muriel’s reproachful accusations of melodramatics rang in Castiel’s ears as the sun finally disappeared altogether, lavender-peach streaks all that remained of its light. At his back, the moon rose up on its royal blue blanket, as full as a stone on a chain. The other ships had already sailed in and emptied their decks, leaving the docks silent and still but for the few watchmen who patrolled them. If this had been a day ten years past, Dean would have been home already. 

The remaining strings of hope in him slackened considerably, and Castiel prepared himself to return to their empty house in the Oakenprow district. Maybe this would finally be the last time he came to these docks looking for Dean, he thought skeptically. 

Then, in the distance – a blot of darkness apart from the water, something that was shaped like a ship with billowing sails. 

In all likelihood it was just a ship that had returned late to port, which had happened many times since Castiel had taken up this vigil. It was the cruellest hope of all, just irregular enough that Castiel’s treacherous heart made it up to be  _ Blackflower  _ finally coming home, bringing Dean with her. But even if it wasn’t Dean, Castiel still had to wait and see. 

It seemed like hours passed as the ship sailed closer and closer to the docks. In the pale moonlight Castiel tried to make out what ship it might be – he recognized them all at this point – but his eyesight just wasn’t good enough. It was as the ship was actually coming in that he finally saw it for what it was.

It wasn’t  _ Blackflower.  _

The name  _ Seateeth  _ had been burned into the vessel’s hull, bold and black even in the flickering light of one of the watchman’s lanterns. It had been clear that the ship wasn’t Dean’s, but seeing the name there in front of him wrenched the piece of his heart that still believed Dean would come sailing home someday.

Now more disheartened than he’d been initially, Castiel tore himself from the sight of unfamiliar men departing their vessel and started in the direction of his little house in Oakenprow. By the time he reached it, the night would be half-gone and tomorrow’s work would be that much more difficult. 

“Cas! Castiel!”

He whirled around, eyes straining wildly in the darkness. He stood beneath the glow of a streetlamp and waited for the shape beyond its reach to come inside the circle of light, his hands trembling at his sides. That voice . . . it had sounded so much like . . . 

And there he was.

Older than Castiel remembered, grayer and thinner than a winter rat, but it was undeniably  _ Dean.  _

“Cas,” Dean said, lingering at the edge of the lamplight, “it’s me.” 

As if Castiel couldn’t see that with his own eyes. But it was understandable that he should want to say it out loud, considering that Castiel hadn’t moved. Part of him wanted to fling himself on his husband like a dog on a haunch of beef; another part of him wanted to keep his distance, lest all of this turn out to be the lovely wisps of some fevered dream. If he touched Dean, would he wake up?

“Where did you come from?” Castiel asked, and he could hear how his own voice shook. 

Dean blinked, a disappointed little furrow deepening the crease between his brows. 

“The ship – the one that just landed,” he replied, uncertain. His shoulders slumped, the haversack in his hands dangling down to the flagstones beneath his feet.

“What happened to  _ Blackflower?” _

“Gone. Years ago, now.” There was a sense of loss there, deep and abiding, but it was obviously an old hurt, for how easily Dean shook himself out of it. “Cas, I’ll tell you everything. But – please, can I hold you?”

And even despite his reservations, Castiel didn’t hesitate. He opened his arms and Dean was inside of them, the cold point of his nose buried in Castiel’s neck. His skin was filthy and stank of bilgewater, but Castiel couldn’t have cared less in that moment. There were places where his bones poked against Castiel’s fingers, and the rough furls of scars Castiel didn’t recognize, but this was exactly the man he had married all those years ago,  _ Dean  _ down to the brown sunspots and sea-flecked eyes. 

Castiel waited for the dream to end, for the sun peeking through the window to cast him into wakefulness; but the minutes passed as they stood there, and his surroundings never showed a hint of crumbling away. The sudden appearance of his lost husband hadn’t inspired a drop of tears, but now that he was realizing that this wasn’t a dream, Castiel felt the telltale sting behind his eyeballs. 

“Hey, don’t cry,” Dean murmured into the round of his shoulder, tone decidedly colored with the warble of emotion. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

The jest was weak and ill-timed, and Castiel squeezed the warning into his husband’s sea-worn body, gentling his grip immediately when Dean grunted out a note of discomfort. 

“I’ll cry as much as I want to, Dean Winchester,” he whispered, finally turning his head to plant a firm kiss on Dean’s bearded cheek. It was the first of about a hundred more, exchanged underneath the yellow-glow of the streetlamp, right there in the streets of the Ellark district. 

As far as Castiel was concerned, the details could be saved for a later time. For now, having Dean back in his arms was miracle enough.


End file.
